What I Believe

I received an email from a man I greatly admire, although I often disagree with him. David Klinghoffer wrote with a suggestion, which I'll paraphrase: "Why not write a post on what you actually believe rather than simply bitching about every rabbi in the world?" Fair enough. This post will explain my "theology," so to speak. But there will be plenty of bitching involved, because what I complain about has so shaped my worldview that I cannot make my case without mentioning it.

I'm evolving. If you'd asked me three years ago, I would have spouted rhetoric largely indistinguishable from Avi Shafran, but with some carping about nepotism, cronyism and the missed opportunities generated by same added in. But that was then. I've seen enough since then to realize that my initial revulsion at the business of the haredi world, suppressed so long ago, was well justified. And I've seen that non-haredi Orthodoxy is no better.

I've also learned that many if not the vast majority of "facts" presented by the likes of Aish HaTorah, Agudah and Chabad are false, nothing more than slick, often cult-like PR.

Jewish belief is based on a mesora, on tradition handed down from father to son, teacher to pupil, from Mount Sinai until today. But a mesora is based on trust, on the honesty and credibility of the fathers and teachers who pass it down.

The lies of the kiruv movement and the lies and misbehavior of the so-called gedolim, the deification of a false Brooklyn prophet, and all those criminal convictions, indictments, investigations, abuse coverups and the like have real impact – they destroy the mesora, break the links in the chain, so to speak, that once bound us. If today's rabbis lie to us, why not Rashi? Why Not Moses?

And, indeed, if the findings of archeology, genetics, astronomy, and so many other scientific disciplines are to be believed – and they should be, in part because they independently confirm each other's work – our forbearers did quite a lot of lying. Either that, or they spoke in the language and style of their day, using myths to teach spiritual truths, never intending those myths to be taken as literal truth, And this, David, is what I believe. Those myths contain some of humankind's earliest memories, often in fragmentary form, of what came before civilization after the great ice age ended and humans discovered agriculture, built the first cities and began to live for the first time in groups larger than an extended family or band. They tried to make sense of their world and to communicate in a non-literate society important information to their children and grandchildren in ways it would be remembered without writing – through myth.

Our unique contribution to these early myths was to emphasize the power of God over the powers of the demigods, stars and other natural forces. It was to bring God into this world. Most cultures viewed the Creator or Sky God as being too remote, unknowable and unreachable to be dealt with – hence the pantheons of the ancients. Jews returned God to this world where we are commanded to make a home for him, both in our hearts and in our actions. We are also commanded to carry this message to the nations of the world.

But we do neither, instead obsessing over ridiculous minutia in halakha and defining ourselves down in the process. Worse yet are the lies and corruption, the stealing and fraud, the Abramoffs and the Lanners, the Balkanys and the Kolkos, rabbis Lau, Amar and Metzger, Elyashiv and the seemingly endless list of other black hatted and black garbed fools we call leaders.

So there you have it. I no longer believe in the mesora as preached in Orthodoxy. I follow halakha for the most part due to simple inertia. I find little religious inspiration in Judaism. Yet I still believe in God the Creator who many billions of years ago made room for specks of dust like us and started the process that brought us – and brings us – into being.

Think of the words of the marvelous Eric Bazilian song made famous by Joan Osborne:

What if God was one of us / just a slob like one of us / just a stranger on the bus / trying to make his way home…

God is in exile because we put Him there. He's with those poor children as their rabbi fondles their penises and as other rabbis lie to cover it up. He sits in the fraudulent beit dins and in the special assemblies called to fake non-existent lunch programs. He was there with Abramoff as he stole from poor Indians and gave to rich Jews and He was there when rabbis looked the other way. We, all of us, those who stole and those who lied, those who abused and those who covered up, and those who just closed their eyes and would not see – have turned God into a lonely old man riding a bus, a liar, irrelevant, lost.

I can't bring God home, but I can stop covering for and associating with those who abuse Him.

That is what I believe.

Comments

[Michael]

Why don't you publicize cases of sexual abuse in the reform community? The atheist community? I don't understand, you don't believe in orthodox judaism, so why do you continue to cover it? should I make a blog about hinduism and the scandals? You made this site and every frum person in the world said you're an asshole. So now you identify with the one group of people who don't hate you because they don't give a shit about chabad or haredi judaism, your average american in new york or LA. "Oh, i'm not religious I'm spiritual!". big deal man. Now When I try to be friendly with people they look up orthodox judaism on google find your hate site and now I look like a maniac. Thanks alot bro, way to keep it real. Your the onee ruining lives one relationship at a time, for anyone who believes in Judaism and it's observance, which, one might not realize from this website, is not about money laundering, child molestation, rioting, burning israeli flags(although that would makes us more popular in most circles I imagine... maybe your own?) etc. Please for the sake of all the baal tshuvas who's families are crying reading your website, for all buissnessmen who wear a yalmulke or for a neighbor who doesn't want to be looked at as a greedy rapist, take your site down.

[Shmarya]

How about you stop the rape and abuse of children in your community, the abuse of women, the stealing, the fraud, the cheating and the rabbinically directed coverups.

And don't forget all those victims in your community, the one's who suffer because of your silence. Make things right with them, as well.

Then we'll talk.

[Mooser]

You really, really need to smoke a joint and chill out. You know, people have dies from too much schmendricity.

And you are nuttier than fruitcake! Did you just discover that fundementalist, even Jewish ones are crazy and most have problems with sex and money?

Hey, but if you do find a messiah who won't fail you, give me a call. I could give him some very renumerative media work.

[Michael]

Shmarya,

The hate that you display saddens me, saddens most people who visit this website, saddens most of the visitors to this site I am sure.

And quite frankly from a secular humanist point of view , no one is going to continue to listen to a never ending ad hominem straw man carousel attack. It is really only self sustaining for so long, don't you think??

The weaknesses of that logic fallacy become pretty obvious pretty quick.

Perversion, abuse is an effrontery to G-d...no argument there at all. Really, my sister in law is the victim of horrendous abuse at the hands of such a person. Its awful, that it happened is inexcusable, but this man has been brought to the justice of the land, and one day in the future he will have to face Hashem's justice...funny thing though, for me (and I know I don't speak for my sister)...it is in the past...its done!!

Sadly, my sister in law has a major block to trusting in any understanding of G-d now, my hope is that someday soon she will be able to get past that. I can't commment on her emotional or spiritual place, and I wouldn't want to try. that is between her and Hashem, it's not my affair. I can support my wife as she supports and prays for and encourages her sister. I can contribute and encourage accountability in those whom we have trusted and who we look to as righteous leaders. In short, I can chose to act on the positive and do those things which further tikkun olam, or I can be my own worst enemy and be a black hole of bitter attack and self-serving, self aggrandizing, self-righteous frenzy signifying nothing.

It is not the same issue at all but I have spent much of the last several years, doing just that. Judging the individual who has been the spiritual leader for our community. Questioning his chassidus, speaking nothing but bitterness towards him, complaining about his failings. Curiously, it does start to eat away at faith and your own ability to see that faith becomes profoundly hampered.

Choosing positive action is so much easier.

Corruption, greed, perversion exist in every sector of this great human culture we find ourselves in, wow...that's a news flash.

"Therefore because the some of the leaders are tainted, they must follow a system that is tainted...."

Straw man, Straw man, Straw man!!!!!!!

The basis for this discussion was your two -minute bio at the front of the post...particularly the whole deal about no one in Chabad supporting the Ethiopian Jews, and your catastrophic disillusionment that resulted from this apparent denial.

Funny thing though, I see a lot of signs on your web site asking for support for "Failed Messiah", not a lot of signs asking for support for families of the victims of these "evil rabbis" you have brought to the "light of day". No encouraging web-verts for donations to any cause that remotely pursues a positive , reconciling or uplifting avenue.

Nothing but hate, vitriol and polemic.

You are what you eat my friend, and hate...well it ain't kosher.

B'Hatzlachah in your chosen field.

Michael

[Shmarya]

my sister in law is the victim of horrendous abuse at the hands of such a person. Its awful, that it happened is inexcusable, but this man has been brought to the justice of the land, and one day in the future he will have to face Hashem's justice...funny thing though, for me (and I know I don't speak for my sister)...it is in the past...its done!!

You're damn right you don't speak for her. In fact, you probably speak against her.

What about all the predators that haven't been arrested? What about the rabbis who cover up for many of them?

And what about the victims?

Is all that "in the past," as well?

I see a lot of signs on your web site asking for support for "Failed Messiah", not a lot of signs asking for support for families of the victims of these "evil rabbis" you have brought to the "light of day". No encouraging web-verts for donations to any cause that remotely pursues a positive , reconciling or uplifting avenue.

I work closely with abuse victims and organizations that represent them, and with agunot.

I've given them thousands of dollars in free publicity.

And I keep this website running specifically so I'm able to do that.

Past all this, as anyone dealing with these issues would tell you, and as has been reported, it is website like mine that have helped force some change.

I run this at great financial loss to myself because it is an important tool in bringing that change and protecting those defenseless among us.

In other words, I actually help people – something I doubt you can claim, here or in olam habah.

[Yaakov]

Shmaryahu I dont know what to say you are an evil Person through and through. A true Ra Ayin in every sense shame on you.

[Ken]

I don't know if you'll see this but hopefully by now you are aware that not all serious Judaism is Orthodox Judaism. I, too, follow halacha--meticulously and seriously--but like you I also reject what has come in the modern era to be known as "Orthodoxy." Note I spent my formative teen years in an Orthodox yeshiva high school. This thing we call Orthodoxy is no less a product of modern history than Reform (to which S.R. Hirsch's "Orthodoxy" was born as a response) or Conservative. All spring up in the wake of the haskalah (enlightenment). I agree with you. Orthodoxy cannot legitimately claim to be truly representative of Rabbinic/Talmudic/Halakhic Judaism. It is in many many ways a radical departure from it. Of course by meticulously avoiding any serious study of history it remains completely ignorant of this reality. You will not find a perfect community anywhere but you should know that there are indeed non-Orthodox approaches that are serious, modern, enlightened, and knowledgeable. I would urge you to seriously investigate certain Conservative communities in the US such as that in Teaneck, NJ and others, and JTS itself (http://www.jtsa.edu/), United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism's descriptions of Jewish living http://uscj.org/Living-Jewishly.html, the Conservative yeshiva in Israel (http://www.conservativeyeshiva.org/), the Masorti movement in Israel (http://www.masorti.org/), Mechon Hadar (http://www.mechonhadar.org/), and perhaps also, inside (if only barely) the Orthodox tent, YCT (R. Avi Weiss' Yeshivat Chovevei Torah http://www.yctorah.org/).

[perspective]

Kol Hakavod on spurring a four year long blog comments debate section!!!

[perspective]

Shmarya,

I have also struggled with the trustworthiness of the mesorah as well based on rabbinic misdeeds. While I am not fully halakhically observant anymore and see mitzvot more as individual spiritual practices rather chiyuvim, but I always explore the possibilities. Below are some disparate thoughts I have had on the issue. I present them even though they sometimes contraindicate each other because I believe this issue is really complicated and I like to hear myself type.

On the one hand, I look at Ovadia Yosef. Here is a man who opens his mouth on anything but halakhic issues in public and the most offensive and ridiculous things spew forth. But I have learned his teshuvot in depth and find many of them sound, reasonable, and sensitive. I am forced to conclude that people are complex and I can't reject credibility completely in one area based on another.

Communities choose what to practice and follow ultimately and like art, authorial intent is somewhat irrelevant. The beautiful thing about ritual and even texts are that they are really owned by the people and not the poskim/baalei sefer. Therefore even if a rav is total immoral, child molesting, racist, embezzling, organ stealing, arrogant, a-hole (who would never think to use a kos less then the shiur the chazon ish used), 200 years later his particular take on a halakha can have been adopted by generations and bring them spiritual meaning in communal religious life. That is not to say he was not a destructive force, but rather his evil behavior may not have impacted the Mesora specifically. The economics of observance over time takes care of some of the issues of evil in any given period.

On the other hand, 'Gedolei Torah' are only so powerful. I think of Steve Greenberg's Rav Elyashiv story and the rather beautiful advice Rav Elyashiv gave him when he confided in him he had bisexual feelings. Rav Elyashiv's 'talmidim' (cronies) to this day say it isn't true and demand he retracts. Some may respond to this point by saying that ‘how do I know that Rabbi Greenberg didn’t make it up or perhaps misunderstood?’ I know him well and I know well the fearful and paranoid structures of rabbinic institutions. You can take my word or not, but it won’t change my point. Ultimately politics and economics play a huge role in how Orthodox judaism is taught and my concern is less the individual leaders who may or may not evil, but the structures of hierarchy around them that are self serving and are enough of a force to distort practice.
In looking back at earlier generations, I wonder about some of the gedolim of the past who are deemed pivotal to our mesora and I wonder. The Rosh on the one hand cut off an adulterous woman’s nose (a distortion of halakha if there ever was one…). But on the other hand, his understanding of Toeh b’shikul hadaas where he genuinely gives authority contemporary rabbanim to solve the halakhic issues of the day is awesome imo.
I am not sure we can project modern day rabbinical issues onto pre-modern rabbis. We live in a totally different world. Rabbanim today can no longer make decisions for their own communities because their every statement can be scrutinized by their peers around the world. And this is only one minor difference.

Unfortunately, the test of a gadol is knowledge and a critical eye, which can be attained by anyone with a big brain whether or not they have a big heart. I know that there are famous quotations that l'halakha describe the requirements of a gadol as being sensitive, etc., but l'ma'aseh there is no way to test for that.

Ok, those are my disparate thoughts of the day on the issue. Keep up the good work. As a patronizing aside, I hope that your anger has settled down a bit not because you are wrong to be angry but because the older you get (4 years since you wrote this piece) the more anger is unhealthy. That doesn’t mean stop writing.

[Pinchas]

Just amazed how someone could put so much effort into finding all the negative news possible to publish about Jews and then relish in it publicly. Something has to be amiss, bad parenting, childhood abuse, masculine inferiority, it's not possible to just take up a hobby such as this, and claim emotional or spiritual health or anything progressive. It is my guess this is not your only addiction.

[.]

B"H
Shmarya, I read your biography...
What's most important for you to understand is that it is what you BELIEVE. You are not saying that in the form of KNOWLEDGE. So why are Charedim not entitled to a belief system? You state that believe in God. Is it at all possible that there are things way above our comprehension? If so perhaps you are mistaken... I have reason to believe that it is madness that's driving you to do what you are. Had you been a rational human being you would have just moved on in life and gotten a real job. Since all haredim are according to you pedophiles, gays or other form of disfunct humans, I ask one question; why are you not married? Girl friend? Aha... So I suggest that you take a good look at yourself before criticizing a whole community.

[Shmarya]

Nice level of idiocy there.

Process: Stopping child abuse, extortion of agunot, and other crimes is, last time I checked, a mitzva.

A normal person should want to do that mitzva.

The problem is, far too many haredim are like you. You live in a world where mitzvot and averot are inverted, and where it is better to keep silent as children are raped than it is to expose their rapists.

As for belief, you can believe that pigs fly, or that human beings can walk through solid stone walls.

Those beliefs are irrational and unfounded, of course, but you can believe them.

In the same way, another person can believe pigs don't fly and humans can't walk through solid stone walls.

These beliefs are rational; and founded in both science and fact.

You both profess beliefs, but those beliefs are far from equal and far from equally valid.

[chabadnik attorney]

Kol Hakavod on spurring a four year long blog comments debate section!!! Posted by: perspective | February 16, 2010 at 03:09 AM

Ditto.

@ . , Personal attacks against Shmarya accomplish zilch. You seem to want to justify the personal attack based upon your assessment that Shmarya is "criticizing a whole community." Maybe I would agree with you that Shmarya's point of view can seem to do that at times. The problem is that WE don't listen, unless we are smacked in the face. I could argue (and I believe to be true) that Shmarya has been mosar nefesh for Judaism. He has literally made himself a pariah in his effort to save yiddishkeit for the illness that is pervasive amongst many of us.

Does Shmarya claim not to have personal issues? No. Who doesn't? Does Shmarya call out every singly Haredi Jew on their personal issues? No,? So why do you feel necessary to personally attack him?

[Troy McLure]

Hi

After reading your blog info it sounds like you are at the point many people come to in life, what is it all about. If truth is absolute, assuming there is absolute truth, then wherein lay truth? We have Truth presented to us from the written word of God and then "truth" presented as Truth from men who think oral law is equivalent if not more important than written law; even though there is absolutely nothing in the written law about the existence of or believing in this oral law that has manifested itself as a living document by those presenting it. What more do you need other than the written word to use as a compass? Who tells you the truth, the written word God or a hierarchy of rabbis? From where does wisdom come, God or yourself as some rabbis teach? Solomon makes it very clear wisdom comes from God so therefore those rabbis who promote otherwise are suspect.

If truth is absolute then all you need is the absolute Truth. Who then dictates the absolute Truth to you? A hierarchy of rabbis or God?

Thinkitthru.tv

[Hadas]

"I find little religious inspiration in Judaism." To me, that's very sad. I'm a convert, but not Orthodox. I don't buy the myth as truth, but I understand and respect the power of that myth down through the ages in Jewish life. Add to the fact, that I'm a childless unmarried Asian American woman in her 40's, I find myself on the outside looking in, hungering to be a part of this ancient and lively spiritual tradition, but knowing I'll always be apart. So why bother? Because I find meaning in the struggle. I hope you are able to find religious inspiration (or something like it) elsewhere...

[His Most Insufflational Incoherentness, The Reb Elyell]

I'm someone who is thoroughly convinced, having read quite a bit on the subject over the years and possessing no metaphysics beyond a vague belief in the unity of all creation, that Jesus was actually nothing more than the first great Jewish "comic book" hero (sans the graphics), perhaps based upon a real individual, perhaps not, who, like Superman and Spiderman, was a consummate outsider with a knowing and wise heart, an unquenchable thirst for justice and a piercing insight into the innumerable follies and foibles of mankind; a character, moreover, who was entirely dreamt up by one or two supremely creative authors with a depth of philosophical wisdom unusual for the time and place and a fervent hope of bringing about an intellectual and moral revolution amongst their more backwards and hidebound brethren. This is not so extravagant an idea as might seem at first glance. Socrates, whose tales predate that of Jesus by more than four centuries, was also very much a creative fiction and a continual work-in-progress dreamt up well nigh whole-cloth by the marvelously inventive Plato, whose conception of Socrates as a profound and highly abstract philosopher happens to differ tremendously from that expounded by the more rustic and folksy Xenophon [a fact which even most people who know of Socrates often are entirely unaware of!] Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine, once you are willing to drop the uninformed notion that the civilized portions of the ancient world were any less sophisticated than our own, that a few of our brighter and more enlightened ancestors had precociously glommed onto the idea of creating a Jewish version of Socrates and thenceforth proceeded to fabricate around their clever construction an enchanting collection of ethically-centered fables and tales? With all of his graceful charm, easy-going manners and sly rabbinical ways, Jesus, or at least a goodly portion of those depictions of him that appear in the first three "gospels" of Mark, Matthew and Luke [we'll leave the bizarre gnostic musings of John out of this, if you please], surely represents the only Jewish character in all the musty, dusty corpus of Judaic "sacred" writings that compassionate and rationally-disposed Jews could ever feel the slightest inclination or interest towards simply because so many of his supposed sentiments and beliefs, particularly his blatant disgust with religious hypocrisy and his condemnation of excessive wealth, are so unabashedly right. What lunatic, after all, can really cozy up to a Moses, an out-and-out tyrant who puts one of his own tribe to death for having the brazen temerity to disavow his orders and pick up a few twigs of fuel on the sabbath [..and it sickens me to tell you that I have actually had the woesome misfortune of having run across several dim-witted Jews who, born slaves that they are in their cringing little souls, proudly defend this wanton display of casual cruelty as being an act of the highest ethical order - anyone seeking the virulent seed of Muslim intolerance and intransigence need look no further!]
The tragedy is that, due to the last two millennia of Christian idiocy and the ferocious hatred that has built up among the Jews against anything and everything associated with these dippy lamebrains, the very real and very necessary aspects of the Jewish soul evidenced by the character of Jesus in his less mythologically spurious moments such as simplicity, kindness, humor, warmth, understanding, forgiveness, and most importantly, love, are dismissed by the more fanatical adherents of the Torah as irrelevant adjuncts to our identity and function as a people, or worse, as being nothing more than highly distasteful elements of a foreign and hostile camp.
Let us continue to hope, you and I and all the other kindred souls who do not shun the cleansing light of truth, that the day may yet come when the homespun wisdom of that supremely lovable mensch "Jesus" [copyright - patent pending - all rights reserved], minus all the supernatural piffle tacked on by generations of rampant syncretism, once more becomes united with the lives and destiny of the Jewish people. Until then, we'll no doubt be confronted with an endless stream of gruesomely "observant" haredi bashing in the skulls of impious five-year-olds, scum-sucking capitalist swine mercilessly exploiting their hired help under the name of charity, and blood-soaked butchers cloaked in the deceitful guise of heroic warriors.
Where's Jesus when you need him, and how come you never see him and Clark Kent in the same room together?

[tooclose2detroit]

Since so much of your initial anger was directed at the "Failed Messiah" for not answering your questions re Ethiopian jews, I would ask why you became so involved with the issue without an answer-even if the answer were from someone else,and the answer were no, would you have accepted it?-were you so emotionally involved with the issue that you were no longer able to view it with objectivity, and rely on the answer from those that knew more than you?-which, of course, would have been consistent with the "Seal of Emes" that you claim is so important to you-or, would you have called those Rabbis nothing more than racists and continued your search to find a Rabbi that would have called them jews?-and did you really know enough to make that determination?-I kinda doubt it-I dont care if you are religious or not, if you looked at the evidence objectively and decided against it-but, I am pretty good at smelling out people that lose their ability to be objective due to their emotion attachment to an issue-EMES requires objective thinking at all costs, in my opinion-I have created alot of "enemies" by slamming a dvar Torah that I cant stand-when one constantly slams Judaism however, then I think it is due to lost objectivity-if you were to put some posts on about things that Frum Jews do well, then you would be more believable-but, i doubt your emotional attachment to this issue would allow you to do that!

[DoTeshuvah]

The most ironic thing about your website is - I just read your "about me" section. So let me get this straight & believe that everything you wrote about the Lubavitcher Rebbe ZT"L and Chabad is 100% true. So - instead of doing something to save Ethiopian Jewry, instead of becoming a living example of Ahavas Yisroel and an inspiration to others to join you in your cause - you create a website to attack those who did not support you and you views of Judaism, halacha and morality? IMAGINE - all the energy and money you've given over to pure evil - how that could have been used to save other Jews and or Non-Jews and improve the world?!

How are you different than those whom you despise? Because you have a website and traffic? You' and your website embody everything you hate. What positive changes have you brought to th Jewish community? To the world?

You don't like Chabad? You choose to ignore the help they give around the world to Jews and Non-Jews alike ok - choose another Jewish group; oh, you don't like "Orthodoxy"? Ok - go help the Jewish Federation; You don't like Judaism? Ok - go help with Peace Corps - are you starting to get the idea?! You have no one to blame but yourself - take some accountability and use all of what you have given away to hatred and make a real POSITIVE difference in this world. There is hope for you - if you don't want to do teshuvah - at least go and be a force for good instead of the evil that you so despise.

[Shmarya]

So - instead of doing something to save Ethiopian Jewry, instead of becoming a living example of Ahavas Yisroel and an inspiration to others to join you in your cause - you create a website to attack those who did not support you and you views of Judaism, halacha and morality?

Actually, I did a lot to help Ethiopian Jews – and many others, as well.

[Thomas M.]

On the mesora: I believe you are presenting a false dichotomy, Mr. Rosenberg. Rabbi Slifkin (yes, that one) had a blog posting recently discussing how fairly recently, Ohr Somayach was led by ravs who taught that, yes, the Jewish sages could have been mistaken in science, and yes, that the world is billions of years old. He laments that what Ohr Somayach has become (with the same ravs) is representative of an ultra-fundamentalism that was unknown to thinkers like Rashi, Maimonides and Rav Hirsch. In other words, if that “either/or” thinking is foreign to traditional Jewish thought (and still far from accepted by everyone today), then for us to make the same “either/or” claim is making the same mistake they are- ie. the tradition is either right or it's wrong (as you say, the rabbis were either lying, or talking in some sort of code). Well, perhaps they taught a correct mesora, but that they also did make mistakes?

So, as R. Slifkin points out also in his books, the claim that the Jewish tradition is always, in all places, perfectly without error is not really what Jewish thinkers have really ever thought. They accept that people have made mistakes. It’s obvious that the rabbis (of the Talmud or elsewhere) had disputes with each other, and they could not all have been correct.

For example, I’d consider myself an observant Jew, and, for example, I believe in the biblical exodus. However, I also believe, as many scholars do, that the numbers of Israelites who left Egypt was in the tens of thousands, not millions (see Prof. Kenneth Kitchen, in ‘On the Reliability of the Old Testament’). Now, the Torah might say 600 thousand left, but it also might say 600 clans left, depending on interpretation, and Kitchen among others accepts the latter. So do I. So in that way, I do not necessarily accept the popular reading of a text, given other historical facts, but just because I disagree over a detail (even a not so insignificant one) does not necessarily lead me to throw the entire tradition out (and historical evidence/non-evidence of the exodus, contrary to popular belief, does not either).

But if we accept the either/or dilemma, we are simply assuming that the 'extreme fundamentalists' are correct- that it really IS an either/or proposition!

So I’d say that the claim that the “mesora is broken” is far too simplistic, and presents a false either/or dilemma that many (most?) Jewish thinkers in history never accepted. In much the same way, saying that science shows the tradition is broken is similarly overly-simplistic.

Even if you or I possessed a superior expertise in scientific/archaeological fields, it behooves us to not claim that "archaeology" or other sciences show the biblical tradition is flawed when many of these same experts or archaeologists would strongly disagree and say quite the opposite. Disagree you might, but to suggest it's as clear as you think, is just not correct.

Just asking for a little nuance- after all, isn't that what's lacking among those you criticise?

[Shmarya]

1. You're conflating the mesora with the scientific views of Talmudic sages.

The rabbis who say the sage could err on science also say the sages could not err on Judaism – i.e., the mesora.

Past that, the chain of the mesora is based on faith. You believe your teacher got the information from his teacher who got it from his teacher all the way back to Moses.

How then does one answer the many clear mistakes these teachers made with regard to actual fact?

And then we have the intentional lies and cheating of today's rabbinical leaders. How do you explain that? And how do you answer the charge that it was like that 75 years ago and it was like that 500 years ago?

In other words, if rabbis are liars, the mesora is destroyed.

2. Kitchen's views are not, shall we say, in the majority in the archaeological community. In fact, quite the opposite is true to the extreme.

[Chaim Solomon]

Just out of curiosity, how many rabbis lie?
I have heard this comment many times, and I'm sure you can bring many examples of prominent rabbis distorting truths and manipulating facts for their own self-aggrandizement. It's hard to argue facts. But ultimately the answer lies with numbers.
Are there terrible people out there? absolutely, but do the minority truly outweigh the majority in this regard? You can hurl proof after proof on me but it won't diminish anything for a multitude of reasons:
1. From a statistical perspective outliers are usually to be ignored. The fact that some people who never went to college make billions of dollars doesn't mean that if you don't go to college you'll be rich. Therefore the fact that there are unethical people doesn't mean that Orthodox Rabbinic Jewry is unethical itself.
2. From a psychological perspective people frequently look towards anecdotal evidence as proof for their agendas. I can state many cases of people accidentally shooting family members and thereby prove that guns are dangerous and therefore should be outlawed. I bet, however, you don't know how many hospital related injuries are related to dog bites (an estimated 4.7 million dog bites annually in the U.S. alone). No one is arguing that we should make dogs illegal to own because it isn't of interest to anyone. We often are quite capable of finding proofs to our beliefs for the simple reason that we want to find it. This type of research would never be accepted in any peer-reviewed journal for the simple fact that it has no statistical basis. You claim that Orthodox Jewry is unethical in its approach, but you base that on feelings and anecdotal evidence; is that really sufficient to "prove" your cause. Are there problems; for sure, we're still in galus. But where do those problems truly exist? That is a completely different question.
3. Items are frequently taken out of context. It's very easy to point the finger of blame and say others are terrible. Did you hear what so-and-so said? But often there is a context which is being ignored. As an illustration of this point (not a proof but an illustration) someone recently "pointed out" to me that the Ibn Ezra doesn't hold that there is any concept of meat and milk and that this is a fabrication of the Rabbis. The Ibn Ezra says that the simple reading refers only to a calf and its mother. I looked up the Ibn Ezra, and while he says that the simple reading is only a calf and its mother, he says nothing of any sort of the former. He only says that the Rabbis learn out from here the issur of meat and milk, and the simple explanation refers to...In other words the concept of p'shat and drash. Unfortunately we often take things out of context and often don't consider the context at all. Sometimes it makes no difference, sometimes it makes all the difference in the world. The Torah has a term for such a concept; it's called Lashon Hara. The evil of lashon hara stems from its virulent manipulation of truth for evil gains.
I have no doubt that you will vehemently disagree with me on these points and will pick apart my arguments with the greatest of ease, and remember that I agree that there are problems, but before you respond, please consider the following: do you really have a problem with the institution as a whole because of insurmountable statistical evidence demonstrating flaws in Orthodox Rabbinic Jewry? Or are you merely looking at the events from an emotionally charged perspective? Think honestly and get back to me.

[Shmarya]

Process:

1. There are no statistics and there never will be any. Why? Because,, a) it is impossible to gather the statistics you want and, b) haredi rabbis won't cooperate in gathering statistics anyway.

2. There is a halakhic concept called umdena, which means that a presumption of guilt based on a preponderance of circumstantial evidence is enough to convict in beit din.

3. We have evidence of dozens of prominent haredi rabbis who have covered up for rabbis who molest children. We have evidence of dozens of prominent haredi rabbis who have covered up for haredim who steal. We have evidence of dozens of prominent haredi rabbis who have covered up or directly participated in schemes to defraud the government.

In other words, we have an umdena.

And we have more than that. We know with certainty the world isn't 5770 years old. We know there was no worldwide flood. We know the Exodus could not have happened in the numbers or the fashion the Torah claims. We know Joshua did not capture Eretz Yisrael the way Sefer Yehoshua says. And this is a very short list.

So, honestly, can I believe what you believe?

I can only do that if I disregard what my eyes see and my ears hear – and what the truth really is.

I am not prepared to do this.

[Chaim Solomon]

I must say that I am surprised you were up as late as I was.

I am going to stay away from your Torah arguments because plenty of others have discussed them at great length. I am sure you have looked up these websites already, but in the slight chance you haven't check out http://www.dovidgottlieb.com/works/reply_to_rubin.htm and http://www.dovidgottlieb.com/works/SinaiArgument.htm.

However, you seemed to have missed my main point. You say we have evidence of dozens of rabbis covering up for gross misconduct. My point was the following: you are using anecdotal evidence to "prove" a general flaw within Orthodox Rabbinics. The more you keep quoting some evidence, the more you prove my point that individuals look for anecdotal evidence to prove their points. I ask you with all honesty to think about every Hareidi rabbi you know, are 10% of them as corrupt as you say? Are 5%? Is it even a fraction of a percent?

I find it amazing that you can bring in umdena as it has no relation to this case. Umdena can be used for a guilty verdict, but even then within a limited scope. 2 witnesses walk in and see a man and married woman under sheets seemingly having an affair, a court can rule them guilty and put them to death (provided that they were first warned). But again, that has no bearing to this case (in fact, I'm not exactly sure what case you were even referring to). You are saying that because there were some mishandlings that "all" Hareidi Rabbis are unethical. My friend, I must point out that you yourself have quoted Rabbi Moshe Feinstein on this website in regards to the Ethiopian Jews. Was he being unethical? How many rabbis must I list for it to be enough?

Your statement that rabbis have been involved in vast conspiracies to cover up terrible secrets sounds like a vitriol fitting for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Again I must make myself clear, I do not condone covering up such heinous behavior, but you are walking in on the middle of a story and reporting. From the outsider it indeed looks like rabbis are covering up horrible events, but so very very often there is much more to the story than you could ever post on this blog.

Listen, I have no intent on changing your positions, in fact, I know that it is impossible for me to do so. I must say though that you almost sound like you are frothing at the mouth. You argue that there is an agenda to whitewash the past. My friend, you sound like a conspiracy theorist. Am I really closing my eyes and ears? Possibly. Or maybe you are so upset over what you feel are injustices you see and hear things that aren't even there.

He jests at scars that never felt a wound.

Please consider what I am saying, is your umdena really an umdena; would you ever believe that because there are some problems that everyone falls into that category? And, do you really believe that there are vast conspiracies of coverups and rabbis sitting around with malicious intents thinking about what evils they can perpetrate today? If you do, I feel sorry for you.

[Shmarya]

Your statement that rabbis have been involved in vast conspiracies to cover up terrible secrets sounds like a vitriol fitting for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Your denial of those conspiracies looks like you're sticking your head in the sand.

Rabbis told Mondrowitz to flee to Israel to escape punishment for the hundreds of child rapes he committed in Brooklyn. He fled and escaped punishment.

Rabbi Yehuda Kolko sexually abused young boys for almost 40 years. Most of that time he worked at Yeshivat Torah Temimah where the Rosh Yeshiva protected him. So, by the way, did other members of the Moetzet of Agudath Israel.

Reichman is still abusing boys in UTA. He's being protected by Satmar leadership.

Laizerowitz fled to Israel where Ger is protecting him – just as it protects Mondrowitz.

Those a just a few out of many example, example that include batai din made of prominent haredi rabbis refusing to turn child sexual abusers over to police.

You're ignorant of the coverups?

Go educate yourself.

But do not pretend to be anything but what you really are – a rank apologist for crimes against children and other defenseless people, and a pompous one to boot.

[Tom]

Shmarya

You and your writings are a breath of fresh air. It is a pleasure to read your words.

Kol tuv.

[sam]

so sad the rebbe did not answer my question i gonna cry to my momy

[Dmitriy Buchman]

Shmarya, you rock! You are one of few people that actually had courage to speak up! Please keep fighting and help getting rid of barbaric and super-bios,and closed minded preachings that stem from Judaism and similar brainwashings.
Judaism, Islam and Christianity are very powerful and ancient philosophies that effects people's life till this day. Most of US laws are made based on Judeo-Christian system. They have numerous personal and social advantages when it comes to building and maintaining a functional society, or dealing with person's spiritual quest or dilemma. However they are very tricky and extremely bios. The bottom line-Judaism, Islam and Christianity are no different from any other religions that teach kids and adults what they should do. In my opinion and experience, they are very debilitating and overpowering methodologies that are capable of screwing people's lives, making them like robots and promoting hate, just like any other hate-promoting propaganda is.

My experience has been very negative with being religious. It tends to play on person's feelings and it uses numerous techniques to "lock you in". After which you feel like crap if you don't conform.

Religion in my eyes is no more then a well built philosophy thats is full of cool things and mainly-CONTROL over the observing society/community, and they deserves to be flushed out from the modern world, together with cancer and other bullshit philosophies that abstract free thinking, progress and freedom of expression.
www.dima-bucha.blogspot.com

[Becky]

If there ever was an authentic word of a true God we have never known it. How anyone can read the OT and honestly believe the Creator of this entire universe had a hand in it needs some serious mental therapy. The same applies to the NT. They both boil down to lying greedy vicious perverted leaders who degrade and enslave minds as well as bodies, children being the most affected. Even good old moses and joshua commanded their brutal savages to not only butcher everyone they came across but to save the virgin women and little girls for themselves. We are expected to believe a loving and just god was behind all of this. The demon god also brought about conditions in order to force his own 'chosen' to either starve or eat their own children. Only a demonic mind could even come up with such filth. No wonder so many fanatical religious people are actually insane. Trying to justify this sort of animal behavior would drive anyone nuts.

I am an ex-christian and a complete study of that book is what turned me away. Most people never read it and don't want to know what really lies within the pages of the most vulgur vicious book ever written aside from the pornagraphic talmud.

There is no historical evidence for the majority of the so-called biblical patriarchs and have been long thought to be the Hyksos Shepherd Kings of lower Egypt who were eventually kicked out and took on a new identity and stole their cosmology from the Sumerian tales.

These warlike thugs are most likely the group that was later known as the khazars who make up 90% of the world's jews today. They haven't changed one bit from the thugs they started out being in the very beginning.

All religions are prisons of the mind and they are used by the rich and powerful to make wars and $$$$$ while the dupes die by the thousands. Since the biblical god seemed to thrive on blood sacrifices, both animal and human, that ritual continues on in the form of war. Child abuse is nothing new and the biblical raping of children shows where this god and his chosen minds trully are, in the slimy gutter. It is purely disgusting the number of pedophiles that parade around as rabbi's, RC priests and protestant clergy.

Man created his god's in his own image and the world ended up worshipping devils and doing the evil biddings of those who promote these sick doctrines. How blind can people be?

How many choose what religion they want? Where and to whom we are born determines our beliefs as we are all told our holy books require us to honor and obey parents. No one wants to think their own families and cultures could be wrong so we plod along like good sheeple and never think for ourselves. It is all so ridiculous it is sickening. Forcing a child into any religion should be labeled child abuse.

[Becky]

http://www.iamthewitness.com/news/2008.12.03-Chabad.Mafia.html

The truth needs to be told and told loudly.

[Becky]

What happened to my post?

[Becky]

So much for freedom of speech. The truth is the truth whether you like it or not. I suggest you read The Synogogue of Satan that can be found free online. A little truth of jewish history would do you a world of good.

[David W]

nice blog, ever check out http://machonshilo.org/en/index.php
Rav Bar Haim is about restoring Torat Eretz Yisrael and real torah sheba'al peh.

Basically leaving Exile mode of Judaism in Exile and creating the light onto the nations that we are meant to be.
Chadesh Yamenu Kikedem.

[Yitz]

I think the Rashi example was not meant to indict Rashi, but it was to simply say if we live with a culture of liars in our modern world, people will become jaded and start to think why not Rashi and Moshe, too. That's the danger! And, I agree with everything you say. You have to live as a stam Jew. Judaism isn't meant to be overly organized - that's when it gets corrupted. Agudah, OU, etc. all suffer from the group think, affinity logic, we vs. them nonsense. We are Jews first plain an simple.

[Niam]

I think we have a lot in common. Many people will try to defend the "good" leaders and say the "bad" leaders were just corrupt people. However, as you indicate, how can you know for sure? This is the problem I have with "revealed" religion.
I have since taken the logic one step further than you have been willing to go, and have as of late wondered if all mythology has a grain of truth or (more likely) was just created to help cognizant beings cope with the randomness in the world and sleep better at night.
While I can't yet deny the existence of a creator outright, what is it in humans that makes us want to believe that a creator would want to bring a creature like us into being? Is it ego? After all, a creator who built this world for us would actually be our servant. Is it fear of the future and/or death? If so, why would a benevolent creator keep us in the dark about its own existence, and force us to rely on a few prophets who claim to have had direct conversations with the creator?
Of course, if an easy answer existed then the debate would have gone away long ago.
My goal is not to get people to change their minds, I am just interested in people and how/why people come to their convictions and beliefs.

[richard spencer]

hello shmarya
ive just been schmoozed by a failed chabadnik
[so called rabbi]i have lost my faith in this baloney cult-all they want is your money
-u r a breath of truth-like bob dylan sez
"dont follow leaders watch your parking meters"-they are not interested in souls,they are interested in the benjamins
keep up the good work by telling the emeth!
posted by shimon

[Sarah]

Finally, someone's telling the truth.
Here is a quote from an email I sent a religious relative of mine recently.

'Armed with two years of Torah study I decided to approach many teachers, Rabbis etc who I had known growing up in the Chabad community to find out what their real views on child abuse were. I had by then found out that six of my friends from Beth Rivkah had also been abused while at school.

I remember the day very clearly when the first person, a prominent member of the Chabad community and a teacher, told me in response to my question that parents must be respected no matter what and that is what Hashem wants. What is there to say? I was horrified.
That was the first of maybe fifteen versions of the same answer, one of them coming from my own mashpia.
What may I ask are these people thinking? I know as clearly as I know that the sky is blue that if Hashem is listening to anyone He is listening to the screams of Jewish children being tormented.'

[Leah]

Dear Shmarya,
I'm sorry.
I know it's hard to forgive to people who hurt you when you trust them, respect and expect only good.
And if they don't hear you, don't say sorry it hurt even more.
This site - you want to be heard.
I hope if they in this word or another they hear you and care and sorry. The may didn't mean it or may be had weakness.
I'm sorry in the name of all of them.
By hating you let out anger and may feel comfort of revenge, but you desensitize yourself from other people pain, then you can hurt others.
Forgive them.
Don't you have to be forgiven? Did you always respect your mother and father? Did you always help someone in need? Did you never have to say sorry, and sometimes it's too late?
So forgive them and come back. You are fighter, you are strong, you can do it.

[Sarah]

Oh.My.G-d.
I just read all these comments from beginning to end.
Have all the 'religious' jews gone completely and utterly mad?!
This person is saying that torturing a child is the ultimate, blackest, most depraved evil and trying to stop it happening is the ultimate good.
Sadism against a child? Hello anyone?
A child is the ultimate of good, purity, innocence and G-dliness in this world.
Right?
Does anyone need to check their kitzur shulchan oruch?
If it was being done in the street, a fourty year old man bashing or raping a five year old blonde haired kid called Mordy, in front of your eyes, and you heard him screaming and his own father laughing, would you tell the child to shut up?
Would you attack the only person who pushed the father off and pulled the child away?
Do you all get that this is real?
The absolute, animal-like horror in Mordy's eyes is real.
It happened today and it's going to happen again tomorrow.
Just instead of the street it's happening a few metres away, behind a closed door.
Did you breathe a sigh of relief?
I actually did not envisage the day when a cat or dog who will protect their young no matter what, is a better judge of right and wrong than a human being.
Crazy, f****d up days indeed.

[Brother]

Do you believe you are your brother's keeper Scott? How would you measure silence? I admire your blog, but I find it to a be a beacon of your constant disappointment. You make a man's flesh or the shadow of a strangers movements beneath the sun your paint. I am an Ethiopian Jew and I wonder why you would make the heroic imperfections of your brother's the antihero of one man's failing. I honor your courage. God is in exile because we put Him there. So, you exile your own brother? You obviously don't know your own hypocrisy? I have many Muslim friends who rant and rave about your blog. It is a source for continued inspiration and motivation. Just as your lost in the faith of your Rebbe; you show the the free will of every imperfection like a glass house. So? Do you think you are repairing the world by throwing stones at the glass house of your brother? Do you really think there is a God that hears you? Just as your God has become a vestigial organ; your brother too becomes one? I hope you find success in the failure of another man's free well; however, I think you will soon find what true loss means. Not this exile you are blessed with. I am only writing to you because it was on a street in Israel that I heard two Arabs friends talking about your blog and I discovered it. I was not ashamed. I was just hurt that my own brother fuels the fire in the heart of my neighbor who is not in need of my brotherhood but looks down at me as a social parasite amidst them, but loves me none the less. You must be so happy to be so celebrated and famed while we defend our culture from the imperfections of others. As much as I appreciate your passion for us in our struggle to exit Ethiopia to Eretz; it was no reason to shed light on the morbid. Racism exists in every social construct and cultural sub group identity. We only come together when we have shed away the flesh and bare the same fruit in the garden beneath the cartographers ink. Bless you my friend. I would allow you in my minyan anytime. I am sorry for your struggle.

[Jeremiah]

You have no foundation upon which to build. You have built on sand and it is constantly changing as will your beliefs. You will continue to flounder until you build upon the Rock. No one can help you. You must discover for yourself what is Truth. You will never find it if you continue to start in the wrong place. I hope that is not your fate, but G-d chooses whom He chooses. Perhaps if you discuss it with Him, you might be lead to the right starting point.

[esther]

reading these old posts, i found this pearl of "wisdom" =
"The Ethiopean niggers are trying to steal wealthy daughters from my students and take away government welfare from kollel chachimim. They should all be put in cherem with the other BTs and fakers. They ain't kykes and are not welcomed in Monsey.

Posted by: Rabbi Leib Tropper | May 24, 2007 at 05:46 PM"

IS THAT THEEEEEEE TROPPER that screwed himself in that sexual scandal last year? hahahaha

[Michael Antebi]

Just an apt anecdote:

A young man comes to his rabbi and tells him, " I no longer will be coming to synagogue. I have become an atheist"
The rabbi says, "Tell me do you know all the books of the Bible and the Prophets?"
"I know a some of it."
"Have you studied the 63 volumes of Talmud?"
"I heard a few lectures on it."
"Have you read the Talmudical commentaries by Rash, Tosafos, etc."
"No."
"My young man you are not an atheist. You are an ignoramus."

[Shmarya]

Just an apt anecdote:

I guarantee you, Antebi, whatever Torah you think you know, I know more.

But that isn't saying very much because, after all, most third graders could say the same thing about your level of Torah knowledge, now couldn't they.

[justin alexander]

Ok, on a lighter note, I'm a Christian from South Carolina with a slight reading obsession that somehow got here from Wikipedia.

I attended a Conservative synogogue for a while and probably know more than the average non-Jew, but this Chabad discussion is obviously super complex.

All I can say is it looks like you're against inhumane slaughter and against child abuse. I have no idea or opinion about Chabad or Lubavich, but good job helping stand up for animals and children.

Best wishes, Justin

[Rickyrab]

I am a Reform Jew (or at least a Jew who grew up with a Reform temple and is very aware of his Jewishness but not very religious/ observant). To me, the Torah was written by Jews in antiquity, sometimes after the Egyptian colonization of the Levant/ Holy Land and sometime before the Greeks got interested in that real estate. So what's in it? Traditional laws and taboos, poorly remembered history (after all, Egypt DID colonize the Levant, a few hundred years before), a dash of mythology (the Garden of Eden bit), some decent ethics, and quite a bit of ethnocentrism. It is a valuable book, at least in part due to its antiquity. But I doubt that the writers of the Torah really understood G-d, rather than merely projecting their own ideas of good and bad onto G-d. And, yeah, I'm somewhat agnostic (and it's not just monotheism vs. atheism. If monotheism is doubted for lack of evidence, atheism is not the only alternative. There are also polytheism, pantheism, and other theisms out there). Nonetheless, Judaism's still a part of me, even if it's watered down Judaism full of beautiful songs rather than chants, women with guitars rather than overly bearded men, and rather trayf food.

[Rochel]

Shmarya

My computer's cookies are scrwy I cant email you. Need urgent help re: Kaddish but cant write more here.

exile389@gmail.com
Rochel (your friendly ex chabadnik blogger)

[Irene]

You know, I'm reminded of a Jew who was sick of the corruption in his day 2000 years ago.

Loved your post.

[Abe]

To Shmarya and all who see my words,
Even if you’ll multiply by 100 all the sins and problems that are amongst the Jews, the ridicule will forever be a great honor for the Jews . Now, don’t be so surprised at what I’m saying, it only needs an ounce of sense to see that I’m right. In a generation and society that morality is at the lowest in history in every corner of the world, it’s an unbelievable fact how holy and moral the Jewish nation is, relatively. And more unbelievable is, the Jews are not secluded from the society as the Amish people are, they are very involved in politics and technology - even though it doesn’t bring too much good - and still there are thousands upon thousands of Jews dedicated to Torah and mitzvos. There are hundreds of Jews who dedicate their whole being for holiness and helping other Jews, and are not willing to get paid back. By the way, they are not mentioned in any blog or site. I myself, in my community, know many such people. Isn’t this unbelievable? If you’d like to criticize Rubashkin, you forgot how many people donated for his cause without being publicized whatsoever- even from communities who are against Chabad’s views. When you criticize about abusing children, you didn’t point out that the thing that causes it, is the fact that there aren’t a lot of older people ready to do these stuff as in other places in the world and the list goes on and on. Don’t mistaken me as defending sin and bias, but why look only on the bad side, especially when the good side shines brightly for whoever wants to recognize it. Even when looking on the bad side look how little it is relatively, to other places worldwide. About the Lubavicher Rebbe I can’t understand how he could be so badly judged, a person whose ceaseless efforts for klal yisroel is known for everybody, even in small issues. So how come when at such an important issue involving so many Yidden, he just wasn’t so involved in, it does not make any sense, every person would think that obviously he had some reason, because if he hadn’t, then his ceaseless efforts in all other issues can’t be understood. Isn’t he worthy enough that he should be judged favorably, and you should not be so bothered about it?
I am calling to everybody reading my words, let us all stop looking at the bad, lets start looking at the greatness, lets open blogs and sites writing about the good and beauty of ourselves and other people.
And to you, Shmarya, I see great qualities in yourself, I’m sure you’ll believe me because Chazal say “true words are recognized”. So I’m calling to you please look at your greatness and acknowledge it just as I did, and then look and acknowledge the Jews’ and everybody’s greatness, and you’ll see that you have unbelievable greatnesses, and so does everyone else, especially the Jews!
Thank you. My Email address is 678abe@gmail.com
Anyone who wants answers to any questions on Judaism and the Jews raised in this site (or any others), please contact me via email.
Abe

[Western Jew]

I read your narrative, and all I wish to extend to you is my condolences regarding your Jewish trust in God and your trust in the publications of a fine orthodox organization. Your website has its function and I will continue to use it as a forum to discuss Torah and Judaism. That said, I was a bit frightened to understand the skepticism for all of Torah that you seem to feel is yours to throw around. Best wishes.

[New Yorker]

"NYPD's First Hasidic Cop"

Considering all the lies and fraud by the organized crime/street gang call the NYPD, I cannot believe a Jew would actually join this corrupt and criminal syndicate headed by the crime boss Ray Kelly.

NYPD (tax collectors for the city and state) are enforcing public policy. When did any of you sign a contract to agree to be governed and waive all of your human rights?

Is it just me or does anyone really care that that this country is being turned into a socialist/communistic country that is headed by the dictator impersonating a president of the federal corporation common known as the United States?

Then when you get beat up by a cop; no attorney will take on your case the moment that it all revolves around you invoking your rights...

[Midge]

And I thought only fallen away Catholics talked the way this Blogger does..You need to ask a lot of questions but directly to G-D and listen. .. He will answer them all. I am a Catholic and love G-D and my faith.

[Adam]

ולמלשינים אל תהי תקוה וכל הרשעה כרגע תאבד וכל אויבי עמך מהרה יכרתו והזדים מהרה תעקר ותשבר ותמגר ותכלם ותשפילם ותכניעם במהרה בימינו

[Bon Bon]

HI Shmaryahu,
What are your thoughts on Zionism?
I'm interested in hearing your view.
Thanks

[So Much Hate]

You're under constant attack for stating what you believe. The people who are posting this kind of attacks are not your friends. They are not wise. The only god they believe in is one who would condemn people who even slightly differ from them in beliefs and actions to eternal hell.

You can see through what they're saying, all the paranoia, all the contempt.

Why are they doing this? Are these really the best example of the chosen people?

[danny]

hi shmarya...i recently discovered ur website from the dialynews article involving the white house picture... after reading about ur beliefs, thoughts, and actions,i realized that every INSTANCE that your website is still running, ur building up an unimaginable amount of sins- most of which you can never repair.. ur problem isnt with frum jews- its with ur lack of ability to be one...the world(jews and nonjews alike) will be a better place when you die.

[Marion Delgado]

The whole excommunication thing was by the Chabad cult, correct? Why would that even affect you? Or have affected you, when you were still interested in being a rabbi?

As an only-an-animal-soul person, I assure you many of us out there do NOT regard that cult as cute or good in any way, shape or form, and I always file objections (admittedly, they rarely are acted on) when they get any government benefits whatsoever.

[adifferentveib]

It was really sad to read your thoughts here, I feel for you. As someone that truly does believe and recognizes the good and the spiritual in our religion, I'm so sorry that you're at a place where you feel there's no one to turn to to help you with all your questions. I hope you'll one day find the peace of mind that you need to return to us fully.

[Shmarya]

What are you smoking?

Question?

What you really mean is that you hope one day I'll give up on insisting things be true and go back to believing fairy tales.

The world is not 6,000 years old.

Noah's flood did not happen.

There was no Exodus from Egypt with millions of people.

The Land was not conquered like the book of Joshua falsely claims.

Etc. etc., etc.

These are not questions. They're facts.

[danny]

ur an idiot shmarya and i hope to die a horable death..theres no doubt ur gonna burn really really hard in hell...u dont have to belive in G-D or judaism>>theres no room for sick people like you...theres a special place for ppl like u, osama, hitler "Etc. etc., etc.">>thats a fact too

[Deborah]

I am a non-observant jew living in Rockland that discovered your website about a year ago. I keep having a reason to come back to read an article here or there. Today I followed a link to this article and I have to say that I am deeply touched by this explanation of who you are. It makes so much sense to me and I for one am pleased that you were able to redefine yourself. I am constantly facing the pain of looking at our local issues and the frustration that no one can speak out against specific practices without being labeled an anti-Semite. Thanks for doing this.

[Shmarya]

Thank you very much, Deborah.

[rooster613]

I think much of the problem today is that Jews of all stripes are worshiping Israel instead of God. We have made an idol out of the state and now sacrifice everything to it, including our ethics and humanity. The Lubavitcher Rebbe played a big part in leading us down this false path by merging nationalism with Torah. Prior to him, very few Orthodox Jews were Zionists (I am old enough to remember this), and everyone pretty much agreed that land for peace was a viable option. Then along comes the Lubie making it a "sin" to give back "even one inch" of land, exerting this influence over lots of important people who are not observant themselves but got a vicarious something from supporting Chabad, thereby setting a pattern of intransigence about the peace process that has gone over well with the militant end of the Zionist movement -- hence the huge growth of Chabad. As long as we keep trying to justify the occupation of another people in the name of religion, the corruption will only get worse. So yeah, the Lubie was definitely a failed messiah -- or at least, his followers made him into one.

[Shmarya]

Very many Orthodox Jews, the majority, in fact, were Zionist before the Rebbe.

Being a Zionist does not automatically equal hard right views on Land for Peace.

[GMN]

We see in Torah, in the holy writings, that our people have failed in practically every generation since the beginning.
Number one, Torah is perfect. Number two, there have been great Jews. Number three in this generation they are very hard to find.
Every generation is lower than the last.
It says in Bereishis 6;5 that "every product of the thoughts of mans heart are evil always".
You should get away from bad people and seek out the good ones even if you die trying.
Don't bash good people and group them together with the sinners.
Don't be surprised when large groups of people and brilliant tyrants flourish. That is the way of the world. It's nothing new. Broaden your perspective.
You should not leave something so precious just because many sinners are vying for it as well.
I wish you only the best of the best my beloved Brother. All good things are to come..

[Anshel Bomberger]

I find your work at your blog extremely important. I found myself involved with a closeted lesbian that is from South African Chabad Jewry. I did a form of sick twisted dance with her for eight years. I learned during the process of getting to know her that she was abused terribly and remains stuck in a system that she somehow loves and adores. A Stockholm Syndrome style of Chabad Judaism. Depending on who she was affiliating with at the time, she was either an out lesbian, closeted lesbian, out Chabadnik, closeted Chabadnik, or pretending she waa goyim in secret on the internet. She was abusive to me because she herself was abused. I refused to go along with what she was doing and I eventually went away. She was not healthy for me. I came to the conclusion that organized religion of all forms is child abuse. It should be illegal to force children into such indoctrination from a young age on. The same way it is illegal to subject minors to alcohol, drugs, tobacco, and porn. In any Ultra-Orthodox system (Fundamental Christianity as well), Children are not afforded the opportunity to become critical thinkers. Children in these cults are brainwashed from a young age and they learn to lie, hate, and fear, based on their upbringing of being lied to, seeing their role models hate others, and motivated by fear to leave secular life behind or never enter into it or they too will be ostracized, shunned, and mistreated. Children are stripped of their opportunity to form their own identities separate from the uniforms and regulations imposed by not only the Torah, but also the Tanya, which repeats in a loop the requirement of Torah study and the mitzvah train nightmare. For me, personally, I may be Jewish from birth, but I am not Jewish in the way I practice my daily life. I refuse to observe what the Torah teaches. It is my way of creating a healthy boundary. I live a life filled with random acts of Chesed, Kavod, and Emet. To me that is Jewing perfectly. I am an intellectual rebel. I have no formal education in Hebrew or Orthodoxy. I have advanced secular degrees in Law (J.D.) and Psychology (M.A.). My secular training has taught me well. I find the teaching of the Torah repulsive and abusive from a psychological point of view and it should be illegal, just as any form of emotional, psychological, or physical abuse is in every other criminal law towards children. The separation of church and state allows this abuse to continue and that is horribly wrong. Anyone that believes in the teaching and myths of the Torah are like secular Christian adults that would still believe in Santa Claus. They are still using their child's mind, not their adult critical minds. Anyone that honestly believes that G-d wrote a book, probably still believes the Earth is flat too. I am outraged and repulsed by the Torah and organized religion. So much, that I contracted with the local Jewish mortuary to be cremated. I do not desire to honor the teaching of the Torah and have my body buried. I want nothing to do with Torah observant Jews. I will forever be a Left-Wing Secular-Humanistic Zionist Jew. I was born to Jewish parents, but I find the teaching of the Torah mean-spirited, hateful, and oppressive. G-d that made the mountains and the seas, never would be such an awful G-d. G-d didn't write a book, man did. Because of my belief system, I don't believe in idolizing the Torah. That to me is placing a text that man wrote ("biblio idolatry") above HaShem, not honoring HaShem alone. I find that sort of Jewing a contradiction to the Shema itself. I have read many books on Falling Off The Derech, Leaving the Fold, etc. Many Jews born into Chabad and Ultra-Orthodox practice as Orthoprax Jews or closeted OTD Jews, do so secretly in order to remain in a community that abuses them. It makes me bitter and angry that their own parents instilled fear toward their family members and their neighbors in order to keep them stuck within a system that is painful, abusive, and not healthy. I am grateful I am out. To those that will read this and post whatever about the Torah being so wonderful, I leave you with this... Arguing about one's belief is like arguing about who has the best imaginary friend. The Torah is repulsive. Ultra-Orthodoxy should be scrutinized by the government and the children taken from the homes of the parents abusing their children in the name of G-d. The only way that would happen is if there were an amendment to the Constitution allowing the amendment of portion around the Separation of Church and State. Until that ever happens more and more children will be abused and grow up to abuse their own children and the cycle of abuse in the name of HaShem continues.

[Moishe3rd]

You are prolific in your writings.
I see you referenced from time to time but, to the best of my remembering, it's mostly what you hate about Jews or Judaism...
It is good to be passionate but, I would humbly suggest that you might try and reconstruct a world that you love as opposed to expressing your feeling of victimization by a world that you hate.

[MonseyJames]

How come your bio does not mention your time at Kol Yaakov in Monsey? And why and how you decided to leave Monsey... I notice that you omit from frum scandals the news about Nathan Rothschild from Monsey and assume you have fond memories of the local yekkies.

[Shmarya]

How come your bio does not mention your time at Kol Yaakov in Monsey? And why and how you decided to leave Monsey... I notice that you omit from frum scandals the news about Nathan Rothschild from Monsey and assume you have fond memories of the local yekkies.

Posted by: MonseyJames | July 06, 2011 at 03:11 PM

I never lived in or near Monsey and I never attended or set foot in Kol Yaakov.

[Oscar]

Hi - I found this blog today and spent a fascinated few hours reading through your posts and these comments. I admire your commitment to social justice, and cheer the combative tone in your responses to the captive, unquestioning folk whom your blog has thoroughly freaked out.

I was also attracted to social service and mysticism as a young guy, and over time the commitment to the former became the one I lived. (I work on projects that aim in various ways to develop education systems in low-income countries.) The latter attraction waned, or perhaps became something else.

My question for you is - as long as this started as a post on your theological orientation - what happened to your interest in religious mystery? Did it disappear when you lost respect for contemporary Orthodoxy, or when found your calling as a muckraker? Or do you now have other outlets for it, other means of expressing it?

[mike]

you just need the attention,no matter how much truth is thrown at you

[YLL]

Deear Shmarya,
U are a disgusting piece of sh*t and the only good thing you have going for your name is that your jewish...so why don't you start looking at judaism from a view other then your f*ckin bias opinion on it.maybe think that the
reason why Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky said to go to
rabbis not to the police maybe so that when things go public after being brought to the police, *ssholes like yourself won't take the information out of context and base your blog and your view of your religion on it.

[Maheshwarah]

Come on Leave Shmarya alone? He is only telling the truth!

[YLL]

Do u even know what the truth is?

[a jew that cares]

just because a minority percentage of religious jews are making chillul hashem and act in a way contrary to torah and halacha does not mean that all rabbis are false and fake. your judging the entire religious jewish world based on the incidents of a few retards, which is complete ignorance. there are way more religious jews, whether chassidic, charedi, or modern orthodox, who make alot of kiddush hashem, do lots of chesed for the poor and others, and are true examples of a ben Torah. ESCPECIALLY CHABAD

also,your hate towards the rebbe is completely foolish. as well all know, the rebbe was one the top leaders, if not, THE leader of this generation who brought thousands of jews back to judaism with complete ahavat yisrael and did it leshem shamayim. and just because he didnt do anything for your cause doesnt mean hes false. every answer the rebbe had to any persons question whether positive or negative wa always for the best. obviously if he didnt go ahead with your plan to save the ethiopian jews, it was for a good,m logicial, specific reason. maybe you werent meant to do it? maybe your mission to do in life was for some other positive purpose/mitza? allow me to share you a personal story:

years ago, my aunt and his husband's marriage was falling apart after she found out that he had a gambling problem among other things. my uncle (her brother) went to the rebbe for advice to see if he could help the husband or not. when he approached the rebbe, he kept pushing him away and the rebbe kept shaking his head (my uncle didnt even mention a word). a year later, my aunt found out he was cheating on her, lost alot of $ in gambling, and after the divorce, for a few years after, kept harrassing the kids and mother.

the rebbe the guy would cause much more damage and hurt to my family and he was 110% right.

also, HASHEM in the torah commands us to follow the advice of our leaders and rabbis no matter what (unless obviously it goes completely against halacha):

And you shall do according to the word they tell you, from the place the Lord will choose, and you shall observe to do according to all they instruct you.

11. According to the law they instruct you and according to the judgment they say to you, you shall do; you shall not divert from the word they tell you, either right or left.

(Devarim 16:10-11)

also, you said in your post that even though you observe halacha, you have little spiritual inspiration for it. I feel that besides from your experience, you probably feel like this due to a lack of belief in the divinity of the Torah and in Hashem (I hope I am wrong). I HIGHLY RECCOMEND you to watch this shiur by Rabbi Yossi Mizrachi (a baal teshuva Spehardic rabbi from monsey who makes tens of hundreds of jews observant every week without exaggeration, and I am one of many examples):

http://www.divineinformation.com/slider-videos/torah-and-science-2/

[Shmarya]

Refusing to help dying people isn't kosher. The Rebbe's inaction wasn't kosher. His lies were not kosher.

As for you, I'm sure no amount of proof will dissuade you from believing your fantasies.

[E.T. (Eternal Truth)]

Your honesty is refreshing. The men who do in this day and time what Pharasaic Judaism did in their own time live on and lie as good as ever. You used the word "cult." This encapsulates Judaism with all it's chicaneries and sleight of hand tricks. Find Jesus and you will never again wonder who God actually is. God bless you for creating this truth blog!

[Shmarya]

Find Jesus and you will never again wonder who God actually is.

Nothing personal, but you quite obviously know nothing about the Judaism Jesus practiced, what the early Church was, or why the Christianity you practice would be completely foreign to him.

Past that, if there's one thing I'm certain about regarding God, it is that he would be very upset by what you wrote.

[Dave]

Shmarya, I sympathize with you. I agree that many Jews today are obsessed with pointless details of halakha and seem to have forgotten the most important, as you said, to have God in our hearts and actions and carry this message to the world. You seem to be profoundly disappointed by the lack of wisdom of many of today's rabbis, and angered by some of their actions. I am too. But please keep in mind that semicha was lost about 1500 years ago, and we are not obliged to follow rabbinical decisions since then. If you study Tanakh and Talmud yourself and come to certain conclusions, you have the total right to disagree with them. I wish more Jews knew this, and I have the impression that today's rabbis try to hide this fact.

You pose a valid question regarding the integrity of the tradition. If you don't trust the people who brought the tradition through the generations all the way to you, how can you know that it has not been corrupted? I can't definitely answer your question, but I can give you some reasons for why I think the Tanakh we have today is mostly the same as the original, and why it is not entirely allegorical:

1. The oldest known surviving text of the Tanakh is about 2000 years old, and the differences between it and today's text are minuscule. If you extrapolate this small divergence to about 3500 years ago, it will still be considerably small, and you can safely conclude that the present text is almost the same as the original. The text of the Talmud today is likewise practically the same as what was originally written, and the Talmud lists a continuous sequence of people, from Moses until their times, who passed the tradition through the generations.

2. The rabbis who wrote the Talmud did discuss what was literal and what was allegorical in the Tanakh. For example, some of them speculated that the story of Job did not actually happen, but was only a fictional story written by Moses to convey its meaning. However, as far as I know, none of them ever thought that the Exodus could have been fictional.

3. From what I understand, the six days of creation were not actual days, the snake was not an actual snake, the flood may have occurred only in the Middle East, some miracles were probably only visions, angels are virtual, Joshua did not make the Earth stop spinning, and Iftakh did not sacrifice his daughter. These and other passages are highly subject to interpretation. However, the slavery of Jews in Egypt, their redemption and their receiving the Torah is described in too much detail to be simply an allegory.

4. Many religions, such as Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, are based on teachings of one person who declares having a divine revelation, and who is able to convince many people of his ideas. Therefore, it is easy to refute the ideas by saying that the person who brought them lied. Judaism, however, has a fundamentally different basis. Although Moses was the prophet who gave the Torah to the people, the Torah describes all the stories lived by the people themselves, and even states that they heard the voice of God directly at Sinai. It does not make any sense that the Jewish people would have accepted a holy text that described them doing something that they did not really do. Even if you think that the Torah was written centuries later, the people would still not believe a text describing what their ancestors did if they had never heard of such things. There is no point when the Torah could have been "introduced", other than the way that is described in it. And as I explained above, I don't think that the text has changed much over time.

In sum, what I'm trying to say is that you can and should question many parts of the Jewish tradition we have today, especially where it contradicts itself or where it defies logic, but you can't say that the whole tradition and texts are invalid or corrupted, as this would be illogical too.

All the best in your search for the truth.

[a female faust]

bless you, and yours, and all that you create;

may you live long, and healthily, and happily, and well;

keep up the Great Work:

thank you.

[Sigmund Schlomo Freund]

so this is how the douche bag was born

[Marion]

As you can see by the date of this post, I am strictly secular. However, my friends who are more spiritually inclined, whether Jews, Christians, Buddhist or Muslim, all gather strength from being part of a spiritual community. You've commented on what you believe. I'm curious about with whom you gather. I'm sure there is a minyan out there that would welcome you, even without the approval of a rabbi in Brooklyn. There are plenty of spiritual communities that also believe that the bible is not to be taken literally. So with whom do you practice?

[psychiatrist]

bobalah, you are hurting so much, did you have a difficult childhood. There is so much pain in your article. And that need for talking dirty........ find a good psychiatrist. Psych Student

[Shmarya]

bobalah, you are hurting so much, did you have a difficult childhood. There is so much pain in your article. And that need for talking dirty........ find a good psychiatrist. Psych Student

Posted by: psychiatrist | October 31, 2011 at 07:57 PM

I think you need to ask your teachers about projection.

I'm not hurting in the least.

You, however, may very well be.

[psychiatrist]

So you have been to one already...... If you see someone shouting, crying, displaying emotion, it is not projection to assume that he is angry, sad etc. as social norms predict that this is the case. Actually you are the one projecting when you are talking dirty "the operation of expelling feelings or wishes the individual finds wholly unacceptable—too shameful, too obscene, too dangerous—by attributing them to another"

[Shmarya]

Posted by: psychiatrist | November 01, 2011 at 07:59 AM

Well, I hope your teachers aren't foolish enough to grant you a degree.

You clearly don't have even a basic idea of what you're talking about.

Now I realize this will be a very difficult concept for your very small mind to grasp, but do try to process: being upset with bad things done, like criminal acts against children, for example, is *not* a sign that someone needs mental health counseling.

In the same way, being upset that religious leaders abuse their positions of power to hurt or entrap is *not* a sign that someone needs mental health counseling.

And responding to personal attacks by reams of illiterate, obnoxious, unintelligent and dishonest followers of said religious leaders by using the only language most can understand is *not* a sign that someone needs mental health counseling.

However, a psychology student who opens his anonymous critique of a person he does not know by writing, "bobalah, you are hurting so much, did you have a difficult childhood. There is so much pain in your article. And that need for talking dirty........ find a good psychiatrist" is clearly unethical, dishonest and not particularly well educated. (Not to mention semi-literate.)

You're projecting your own psychological issues on me, and you're misusing the small amount of psychology you've actually learned.

You may not know this but if you had a license to practice, it could easily be revoked for this.

And if your teachers knew that wrote these comments they could (and should) legitimately bounce you from any psychology program you're enrolled in.

Process that.

[psychiatrist]

Wow ! I have succeeded in annoying you ! now we are getting somewhere. Your response is sooo telling of your emotional state of mind. Can be used as a text book example.

[Rosa]

This is fabulously fun and reminds me of what it is to be a Jew. Thanks for the pilpul. I may be late to the party but it's a window on a life that I never had.

[Jack Rosenthal]

The Haredim are an abomination and a blight on all of Jewry. They should be shunned by all other Jews. In Israel, they are a cancer to the national security, economic viability, social cohestion and national patriotism of the country. The overwhelming majority of them cannot be compromised with; they are a menace to the rest of us with the totally phony, obscessive, hypocritical "Torah-observant lifestyle" and frankly, many of the so-called "modern orthodox" are their enablers and sympathizers. If Israel could wake up, it would take them by their beards and tzitzes and their ugly women by their ankle-length skirts and hurl them over the border into Gaza or the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon where they could "exist" with Hamas and Hezbollah until they got their throats slit.

[Mike in Miami]

Shmarya, this is NOT sarcasm or an attack. I agree with you. I just want to point out the deeper implications as I imagine them.

look at what you said on October 24, 2006 at 12:00 PM: - The issue is not whether there were ever good, honest rabbis and Jewish leaders. Of course there were. The point is the mesora is broken, and the preponderance of evidence is that it always was.-

I say - Something can only be broken if it can be seen now as having been intact at some earlier point. But, what the investigations into language, history and psychology have strongly suggested is that things are SAID to have been intact, whole, fully themselves as an expediency. Something that has "always" been broken never existed - (to use the phrase associated with postmodernism or critical philosophy "always-already") If mesora has always-already been broken then it was never what it claimed to be. What you are not saying is that Jewish tradition is false, something made up, an expediency.

But what has emerged is the awareness that all histories are expediencies. There is no culture, big or small, that is not the product of its own imagination, that is, not a reconstruction: a story that a group tells itself about how they began, their purpose, what their value is. That is, their meta-narrative.

I went to Israel and studied at Aish ha-torah in 1987. It was the first time I studied torah, really. I was not a good student and felt very torn by it. To some degree I still do. But what was at hand for me was the feeling that I was being invited to narrow my life though it was presented as an enlargement. This was something I didn't want to do.

One thing that put my whole relationship to the "rabbis" in perspective what this: During a class session a rabbi said that it was permissible to lie in order to do good. The context was of course narrow. The lie was something like telling your wife that she was a great cook when she was not in order to not ruin her sabbath. But the implications were clear to me. I never thought that there was any going back. The whole of the Torah had been revealed.

[Shmarya]

The rabbi was probably Motti Berger.

[Bernie Waltzer]

I was born a Jew but I have always questioned the practices of the orthodox. Now I see that the "most religious and pious" are a bunch of phonies.

I believe in the State of Israel but unless they stop being controlled by the religious right the country will fall into the dustbin of history and accompany the other middle east religions that we only read about in history books.

Not all Black Hats follow the extreme practices of the few but if they don't change politics internally, they will also loose their children to the outside world.

Keep up the very good work.

[Paul Allen]

Wow, first of all Shmarya, thank you for this blog and for this post about your beliefs. Your path and perspective are inspiring.

As a non-orthodox and non-student of all the branches of Jewish observance, I can't really follow all of the rabbinic and liturgical references here -- nor am I all that interested in them.

Regardless, I consider myself very Jewish, and I fear for the evolution of Judaism and Jewish values in the world. It seems to me that in our increasingly connected world, as in other religions, it's the less creative, the less thoughtful, the less literate, the less tolerant, and the less intellectual, that dominate. What this means to me is at the precise moment in history when the Jewish people need another Moses, we are bereft with idealogues on one end of the spectrum and lightweights on the other.

Shmarya I hope you grow in strength on your journey and gain confidence from all the ad hominem attacks -- confidence that you're on the right path.

[Shmarya]

Thanks, Paul.

[Mitch]

Think of the Joseph story. No where else do so many people, including criminals, one of whom is about to die, have dreams from Almighty God! So common were these dreams that being able to interpret them was the only thing seen as a gift. Yet the story is wonderful & our Talmudic ancestors explanations are fabulous in their interpretations. It would be wonderful if ten of us moderns had as much wisdom.

As for your site, it's definitely needed. The last thing any one, especially Jews, want is for our rabbis to be seen as being like Caesar's wife. They are no different than anyone else. Most rabbis, like most clergymen in general, are wonderful people doing a relatively low paying job, with incredible headaches (imagine being a marriage counselor without even one year's training), with horrific hours, all to help people become more likely to do good deeds and avoid evil ones.

Maybe if people see websites like this one (there should be ones for Protestant Ministers & Imams as well), those Catholic priests would be given a bit of leeway. I swear that all clergy have pedophiles.

[Pious]

A mouthpiece for the truth this blog is. My admiration for the job you are doing, in particular for exposing the stenching sectarian essence of Chabad.

[maria]

You are seeing God as Mother Theresa did…But to come closer to the God forsaken we have to be touched by the grace to hear his voice among the chaos…to find Him with auto discipline and humbleness in the silence of the desert that our humblness strive to create...a replaced desert..where God spoke the first time. Do not fear…you will be found if it is your deepest desire by the lost meek and suffering God that you already feel true. I found him…in my own suffering and the love sacrifice offered for me. I truly wish you a truly beautiful voyage where you will relish the loss of your burden

[Cheryl Crandall]

Shmarya: You're RIGHT ON! Tell it like it is; you're telling the truth and you're a very brave woman.

Yasher Koach!

[Cheryl]

I urge any Jew who can see Chabad for what it is and wishes to leave, to do so immediately and see a therapist and get a good job and stay away from abusive cults.

[Anchell]

shmarya
I have learned that the stories of past be they myths or parables or fables are all layered insights into our ever evolving souls. that the knowing of a child is enhanced as he becomes a young adult and then an adult and finally a senior. This on the smaller scale is how our teachings are, they imbue greater greater meaning as we ascend through time and of course space ... the learning is never ending ...